Electrical wire harnesses for automotive and other applications are assembled primarily through the use of manual labor. Areas of production which contribute toward an appreciable degree of manual intervention include: measuring and cutting predetermined wire lengths, stripping of insulation jackets from each end of the cut wire, crimping a terminal to the insulation jacket near the stripped end of the wire, electrically engaging the stripped end of the wire to the terminal, and inserting the terminal into a connector housing. Each manual intervention during the manufacturing process is time consuming and can contribute toward operator error, high manufacturing costs and/or a degradation of the overall quality of the wire harness.
Known methods to electrically engage multi-stranded conductors or cores of wires to terminals requires the removal of the insulation jacket at the electrical engagement area to achieve reliable electrical conductivity. Unfortunately, and especially true for smaller gauge multi-stranded wire, the stripping process can lead to conductor/core damage thus prohibiting the use of more fragile smaller gauge wires in many electrical applications. Consequently, the cost in copper for larger gauge wire is expensive, the overall bulk of the wire harness is large and weight of the wire harness is high. Moreover, coupled with large gauge wiring and bulky harnesses, the terminals and thus electrical connector housings attached to the distal ends of the wire harness are subsequently larger than otherwise necessary.
Because wire harnesses often contain dozens, if not hundreds of wires, often having varying wire gauges and wire lengths routed to a plurality of separate connectors, various means of identifying the wires and thus preventing wrong terminations, or simply poor terminations have been utilized. One such means is assigning a specific color or color pattern of insulation jacket 178 to a specific gauge wire size. This technique can be limiting and cumbersome in the manufacturing environment of wire harnesses, because the wire must be identified prior to the termination of the wire to the terminal and insertion of the terminal into the connector housing. Moreover, the wires, terminals, and/or connector terminal cavities must still be identified to assure proper terminations and possibly assist in maintenance issues. Such identification has typically been done with ink print on the outside of the wire which has a tendency to wear off in a harsh environment.